When Nicolette Worth was 16 she felt like she was dying. She couldn't explain it. It seemed irrational but her gloomy moods always seemed to linger longer than they should. She says she started drinking to escape the feeling but when the hangover wore off little had changed.

Her parents had noticed the problem too. Having raised their daughter in Sydney, they thought a change of scenery might do the whole family some good and shifted to far north Queensland.

"They moved us up to Cairns and my life changed," Nic says. "I thought I wasn't going to work, I thought I couldn't go through another day. I was that sick and then this pyschiatrist said 'This is what's wrong. Don't worry. It's normal, lots of people deal with it, just do this' and I started getting better."

Not long after the move north Nic says she realised she'd been suffering from panic attacks and depression for years. One outlet that removed her from every day stresses though was drawing.

"I feel like art is a way for me to express how I travelled through that struggle to be where I am now," she says.

A life-long hip hop enthusiast, Nic says marrying her two passions was a crucial step in her recovery and as an artist.

"When I kind of just linked hip hop and drawing together and that for me gave me that good feeling at the end of the tunnel like I can actually do something with my life," she says.